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UAE 'increasingly at risk of cyber attacks', KPMG report reveals

A new report investigating cyber security across the globe has found that companies based in the United Arab Emirates are increasingly at risk of cyber attacks.

The KPMG 2015 UAE Cyber Security Survey, which focused on firms' ability and level of preparation when it came to warding off cyber attacks, revealed that UAE firms needed to take far greater steps in order to prevent these attacks.

A third of respondents who took part in the survey over the course of three months said that they or their network had been hacked in the past 12 months, an event which took them between two weeks and a month to recover from. More than 50 per cent of the survey respondents that had been hacked reported that they were unaware that they were being attacked by cyber criminals.

KPMG also reported that just 50 per cent of survey respondents said that they had arrangements to prevent cyberattacks in place.

Nitin Khanapurkar, partner, KPMG Lower Gulf, told Gulf News: “The UAE is on the list of the top 10 destinations targeted by cyber criminals and it comes as no surprise that cyber threats have been growing across key sectors like financial services, oil & gas, technology, Government, retail, construction and health care.

“The objective of the 2015 KPMG Cyber Security Survey was to assess UAE organisations’ readiness and ability to respond to cyber security threats and the survey has thrown up some interesting insights.”

The UAE has been ranked 19th among countries across the globe that face the biggest risk of online infection, another report from internet security firm Kaspersky called the Security Bulletin Overall Statistics Report for 2015.